C+

C

C-

D+

D

D-

F

I gotta say I enjoyed that movie more than I thought I would. It was much better than Burton's Alice In Wonderland. I didn't know who was who going in, so I was actually surprised that Kunis turned out to be the green witch, I thought it was going to be Weisz.

My one great complaint; they should have ended it with a flashforward to Weisz plotting revenge against the wizard and them BOOM a house falls on her

Dorothy kills Evandora and Glinda turns up 3 and a half seconds later to tell her "good job! Now go see the wizard who I know is a sham to make your magic wishes he does not have the power to grant."

What a cow!

What the hell was Glinda doing lurking on Evandora's periphery?

Was she about to put her on hit on the wicked witch of the east, or did she summon the twister and the house and the little girl to fall her old friend?

Glinda has always had the power to free Oz but she pauses from the act because she seems to have no interest in ruling Oz.

If she chose Dorothy and used this little girl as a missile, then she chose Oz too, and probably vetted the both of them before selecting these two as living weapons to fire at her curvy opponents from a safe distance. She didn't "see though" Oz's bullshit, she picked him because of his bullshit as a mischievous little pawn.

She's behind everything.

The army Glinda raised should have been slaughtered and eaten by flying baboons.

Glinda isn't the good witch of the North she's the Smart Witch of the North.

This is what Ming did too.

Keep the boroughs at war constantly infighting over petty contrived grievances so that they never have the singular or unified power strong enough to challenge his thrown.

And in the 1939 movie, she definitely set Dorothy up to have to kill The Wicked Witch. "Yea, she killed her, and look, she's wearing her shoes, and there they'll stay. Watch out, or a house may fall on you too" And... she knew all along Dorothy didn't have to do anything but, click her heels together and say "There's No Place Like Home" 3 times, but, she withheld that information until after Dorothy killed the Witch for her.

And in the 1939 movie, she definitely set Dorothy up to have to kill The Wicked Witch. "Yea, she killed her, and look, she's wearing her shoes, and there they'll stay. Watch out, or a house may fall on you too" And... she knew all along Dorothy didn't have to do anything but, click her heels together and say "There's No Place Like Home" 3 times, but, she withheld that information until after Dorothy killed the Witch for her.

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I thought the Wizard had Dorothy kill the Witch because he was afraid of them? It's been a long time since I watched the movie and I recall the books better.

I just saw Oz the Great and Powerful a second time, today. I'm actually amazed taht the idea of remking the original is so appealing to me. I hope Disney makes lots and lots of money so this idea becomes more realistic.

And in the 1939 movie, she definitely set Dorothy up to have to kill The Wicked Witch. "Yea, she killed her, and look, she's wearing her shoes, and there they'll stay. Watch out, or a house may fall on you too" And... she knew all along Dorothy didn't have to do anything but, click her heels together and say "There's No Place Like Home" 3 times, but, she withheld that information until after Dorothy killed the Witch for her.

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I thought the Wizard had Dorothy kill the Witch because he was afraid of them? It's been a long time since I watched the movie and I recall the books better.

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Well he did, but, Glinda sent Dorothy to him, and that doesn't change the taunting of The Wicked Witch that Glinda did, ensuring The Wicked Witch would see Dorothy as her enemy (And again, Glinda could've saved all that grief by telling Dorothy how to get home, but, she deliberately withheld that information)

If the Wicked Witch of the West wasn't deathly allergic to water or pretending to be deathly allergic to water... What was Dorothy's plan? The Witch would have to leave the throne room for half an hour to change her frock to something that wasn't soaking?

The Nazi's could have been removed from Poland through Pillow fighting.

As some of you already know (via, most recently, my post on a thread about how Into Darkness affects ST novels), I am openly hostile to reboots, and to taking extreme, pointless liberties with established canon. Beyond agreeing with The International Wizard of Oz Club about Maguire's stuff (and P. J. Farmer's stuff, too) being heretical, I am also openly hostile to the 1939 film (the very poster-child for "extreme, pointless liberties," like reducing the story to a dream-fantasy).

Given that, I'm encouraged by the very canonical reference to the Wizard's real name, "Oscar Diggs" (Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs; he went by his first two initials because of what the other 7 spelled out), and the pointed rejection of names Maguire came up with, but would anybody care to venture an opinion on whether I'd enjoy this film?

Oh, and to be canonical about the first book (for those who haven't read it):
Dorothy never comes face to face with Glinda until the penultimate chapter.
When her house lands on the Wicked Witch of the East, she is met by the unnamed Good Witch of the North. The Good Witch of the North doesn't know how to get Dorothy back home, so she turns her hat into a slate, on which words magically appear, directing her to the Emerald City. When she is captured and enslaved by the Wicked Witch of the West, the Witch, in an attempt to steal the Silver Shoes, places an iron bar across a floor Dorothy is to mop, and renders it invisible. Dorothy trips over it, loses one shoe (which the Witch promptly snatches up), and (in a fit of unthinking rage) dashes the contents of the scrub-bucket over the Witch, who collapses into a puddle over the course of about a minute.

It's only after the Wizard's balloon breaks its mooring ropes, leaving Dorothy still marooned, that the Soldier with the Green Whiskers finally suggests asking Glinda for help.

Oh, and to be canonical about the first book (for those who haven't read it):
Dorothy never comes face to face with Glinda until the penultimate chapter.
When her house lands on the Wicked Witch of the East, she is met by the unnamed Good Witch of the North. The Good Witch of the North doesn't know how to get Dorothy back home, so she turns her hat into a slate, on which words magically appear, directing her to the Emerald City. When she is captured and enslaved by the Wicked Witch of the West, the Witch, in an attempt to steal the Silver Shoes, places an iron bar across a floor Dorothy is to mop, and renders it invisible. Dorothy trips over it, loses one shoe (which the Witch promptly snatches up), and (in a fit of unthinking rage) dashes the contents of the scrub-bucket over the Witch, who collapses into a puddle over the course of about a minute.

It's only after the Wizard's balloon breaks its mooring ropes, leaving Dorothy still marooned, that the Soldier with the Green Whiskers finally suggests asking Glinda for help.

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Speaking as someone who has held (and read) a first edition copy of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and curated a collection of first and early editions of all the original L. Frank Baum books (including, by the way, By The Candelabra's Glare inscribed to his wife), as well as original Oz artwork from Denslow and Neill ... canon is overrated and almost entirely irrelevant. So what if MGM changed the color of the slippers from silver to ruby to take advantage of technicolor, the change worked. And so long as deviations from canon work within the context of the film, I'm all for it. If I want canon, I'll go back and re-read the original books and and enjoy the original artwork. And, for the most part, Oz the Great and Powerful worked. I'm happy we got a film that honored and creatively told a story from the Land of Oz.

For those who don't get why the whole business of the 1939 film turning the story into a dream-fantasy gets my privates in such a knot, I refer you to Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories." But to summarize, dream fantasy is an entirely different genre, one in which the stakes are basically zero. It works very well as a vehicle for absurdist political satire (which is why Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books work so well), but anywhere else, you end up with the 9th Season of Dallas, leaving your audience with feelings of betrayal.

The "ruby slippers" business was just an annoyance. And not nearly as big an annoyance as MGM's tendency to act as if they owned anything other than the liberties they took with the story, or the shocking number of people who act as if the movie were the canon source and the book was an adaptation, evidently not realizing that the book predated the movie by decades.

FWIW, I don't think that the intent of the 1939 film is for Oz to be just a dream.

Oz was the part in Technicolor, whereas "real life" was in black and white. Furthermore, the greatest endearments and most frightening perils occurred in Oz. The tornado is scary and impressive, but the Wicked Witch is scarier. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are quite familiar, and yet we end up knowing the farmhands almost not at all. In every tangible way within the film, Oz has greater reality than Kansas.

In the end, Dorothy can't believe that Oz was just a dream. Why are we supposed to put our trust in the words of characters rendered to us in only black and white, whom, again, we hardly know at all? The film is dedicated to the "Young at Heart". We can easily take that as a declaration that we aren't supposed to believe Aunt Em when she says that Dorothy "just had a bad dream", since what Em is saying is the "grown-up thing" to say.

Granted, there may not be much room in the film for Dorothy to have physically gone to Oz. However, the way the image splits in two after Dorothy gets hit on the head (around the 2:00 mark of this video), in my "head canon", I've always interpreted that as physical reality going one way and Dorothy's true inner reality going another.

Granted, there may not be much room in the film for Dorothy to have physically gone to Oz. However, the way the image splits in two after Dorothy gets hit on the head (around the 2:00 mark of this video), in my "head canon", I've always interpreted that as physical reality going one way and Dorothy's true inner reality going another.